I have contributed to the IMDB boards, particularly when I can answer a question in the "I Need to Know" section. At the moment, though, it's overwhelmed with rude, paranoid commentary and people talking about their use of mainstream movies for masturbatory fantasies.

I can't believe it's taken IMDb this long to shut them down given some of the slanderous crap that's been posted there - not only about celebrities but other IMDb posters. It's long been a literal bully pulpit and it's always my last resort when I want to post about a favorite film or star (inevitably someone will try to pick a fight over nothing).

I was startled by this news at first, then suddenly realized that in recent years I visit the IMDb boards very seldom. There was a time when I enjoyed it, especially when someone would post a Photo I.D. contest at the Classic Film Board, but those days seem to be long gone. The trolls have taken over.

That said, I do still visit the message board for an individual movie, usually right after seeing it, especially if I found some aspect of it confusing, strange or ambiguous. ("Did anyone else feel the same way?") I'll miss that, but I won't miss the trolls.

In general I find "but the trolls" not really a good argument to shut down, or condemn anything. I hadn't been there a lot recently, but you could make the same argument about pretty much anything/anyone, including many elected politicians, and perhaps even about this place!

No moderation ultimately killed it. There's a certain individual who has plastered his FOR SALE ads all over the message boards. Shills and trolls and crude comments were, apparently, too much for IMDb to keep up with. Oh well.

Until seeing this posting on the message boards demise, I never even went there, so I have no bias one way or another, for or against. The operative word I think applies here is "monetize". IMDb corporate figures why spend money on this website free feature. Unlike me, thousands of visitors to IMDb would go to the message boards. Now, IMDb advises them to use Facebook. Google groups movie sites like alt.silents are also pretty much gone, their users migrating elsewhere. Facebook seems to be taking over where it can.

I generally liked the IMDb message boards and was a lot of fun back in around 2007-2008 when many thought Joss Whedon was gonna do the Wonder Woman movie. The 'Boards'' are a remnant of the early years of the online community, similar to the CBS running chats the night after a reality show broadcast like "Survivor" or "The Amazing Race". But as with those chats, IMDb probably thinks a lot of bandwith is being wasted with people generally trying to 'hook-up' on their boards. Too much of 'how old are you', 'where do you live' , etc. I guess thats what Facebook's for. People generally run out of things to say or discuss about a tv show or movie and it goes off track. There was a guy called 'Alfred-the-butler' back in the day on those CBS chats and he was hilarious but I digress. Thanks for the look back down memory lane as far as those boards.

But will F Gwynplaine MacIntyre's phony reviews continue to stand unchallenged and falsely inform the unwary that several lost films are still around?

I had noticed the boards had also recently become soapboxes for the PC-militants to decry every movie they felt to be "inapropriate." Peter Sellers' spoof on Charlie Chan in MURDER BY DEATH had one gentleman thundering that this movie was "disrespectful to the Chinese community!" Perhaps the limit was reached when somebody, after viewing something as recent as STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS, noticed there were no prominent Asian roles to be seen in the film and then proceeded to label the movie as "racist..." and he WASN'T kidding.... How much further was this going to go?

The Blackbird wrote:But will F Gwynplaine MacIntyre's phony reviews continue to stand unchallenged and falsely inform the unwary that several lost films are still around?

I had noticed the boards had also recently become soapboxes for the PC-militants to decry every movie they felt to be "inapropriate." Peter Sellers' spoof on Charlie Chan in MURDER BY DEATH had one gentleman thundering that this movie was "disrespectful to the Chinese community!" Perhaps the limit was reached when somebody, after viewing something as recent as STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS, noticed there were no prominent Asian roles to be seen in the film and then proceeded to label the movie as "racist..." and he WASN'T kidding.... How much further was this going to go?

Well, the fact that Gwynnie was dug up a couple of weeks ago and found to be still alive probably has the IMDb fearing reprisals in court from him for not allowing him to post by telepathy while he rested in/as dirt. That's the genuine reason for the demise of the board. Threats about racism were minor compared to threats regarding his ability at genuine telepathy - at least that's what my lawyer, Ewe R. There, intimates. And when he intimates, he intimates...

I consider these kinds of things a breech of trust of corporations. It's been done several times before on the Internet. This is what the whole Bitcoin/blockchain science is about, creating decentralized hubs of information that cannot be taken down because they are not centered in a corporation. The ledger of Bitcoin is distributed by "mining" like the way Napster circulated music. There are over 500 other cryptocurrencies like Synereo, Golem, Ethereum, Augur, that do similar things.Synereo is call the Facebook Killer because it hopes to be a decentralized Facebook type app..

The boards were dropped with the ridiculous explanation it was to "better serve" the members of IMDb or something like that. What point is there to actually logging into IMDb as a member if you are not going to post on the message boards - unless perhaps you want to write a movie review which IMDb likely has the rights to resell to another website and of course the writer will not be paid at any point.